Forgotten Television: Miracles (2003)

Paul Callan (Skeet Ulrich Scream) is an investigator for the Catholic church with the purpose of proving whether a claim of a miracle is truly divine or if it has a mundane explanation.  Paul has a crisis of faith after years of having to dash the hopes of the faithful by explaining the more than earthly reason why their “miracle” wasn’t one, questioning whether humans are alone on Earth, or if God is amongst us.  While on sabbatical trying to find his faith, he is asked to investigate a young boy with healing abilities close to where he was staying.  To Paul’s surprise, the ability seems to be genuine, but with every person he heals, ten-year-old Tommy Ferguson (Jacob Smith) gets sicker with his gift eventually killing him while saving Paul’s life.  The report of a real miracle submitted to the church was declined as not having any real proof, which causes Paul to resign from his job.  He is then approached by Alva Keel (Angus Macfadyen) with Sodalitas Quaerito, an organization that investigates and catalogues unexplainable phenomena. Paul, along with Evelyn Santos (Marisa Ramirez) and Alva investigate a new miracle each week while also trying to fight an impending darkness that seems to be coming.

Miracles premiered on ABC after the 2003 Superbowl with good viewership and was doing well in its Monday 10pm timeslot.  It gathered a small loyal following and got mostly positive reviews, but right around this time, the Iraq war began, and the show was often preempted for News coverage and eventually the show was moved to a different day, but without any advertisement of its new time slot. After the show’s sixth episode, the network decided to cancel due to low ratings.  This angered the fans of the show, who blamed the network’s mishandling of the shows scheduling as the culprit behind the loss of viewership.  A campaign to save the show began, with fans mailing in messages written on napkins to many studios, hoping someone would pick up the show to continue the story.  Unfortunately, the campaign was unsuccessful, and the show concluded with thirteen original episodes produced.

This was a very well-produced series; with compelling storylines and characters you could connect with. Both Skeet and Angus have an intensity that exists without even speaking and can convey a variety of emotions with very little dialogue.  Marisa was cast specifically to not only be watchable, but to be a bit more normal and able to connect easily with audiences. The setting for the series was purposely kept to mundane and everyday life.  In fact, creator Richard Hatem used “Mundane” as a buzzword for the series, showing that strange phenomena can happen to anyone and anywhere.  The show is often considered to be one of the best one season shows produced.

Is it…”God is Now Here” or is it “God is No Where”?